Jay Ambrose

Syndicated Columnist

Recent Stories

So, 2014 is done for. It was a year that happily ended with a pickup in the economy and other blessings but also had its excruciating moments and sometimes something making those moments and others in the further past worse: inappropriate or overreaching reactions.

When Todd Siler was 12 years old, he asked what the point of the universe was. To help find out, he later became the only one ever to get an art-and-psychology Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has since painted up a storm, thought up a storm, and is now collaborating with a scientist to give us a new boundless energy supply that could end global warming fears.

Though he just may muff it, as he has muffed so much in this presidency of his, Barack Obama has just been handed a golden opportunity to rescue his legacy and to start doing some amazingly wondrous things for this country of ours, things he himself has said he wants.

Hallelujah, fellow citizens. There's a relatively new idea trotting about in the land. It offers great hope of addressing persistent, heartrending social problems effectively and without waste, it is backed by conservatives and liberals, and it could ultimately replace a system that has provided far too little for far too much.

President Barack Obama wanted to try out another experiment in unilateral government, was persuaded it would hurt Democrats in the coming election, and backed up. The trick he had in mind — finding ways to make some illegal immigrants legal without the approval of Congress — now won't happen until after November. Then, however, we just might get a storm for which no shelters are yet constructed.

Here they come, a charging brigade, conservatives who just might win a fresh war on poverty and otherwise help the down and out because of compassion that hardly stands alone. It is accompanied by analytical soundness.

Bill Ayers is back again, though not the same as in his youth, thank heavens. That would mean boom, boom, boom, bombs going off everyplace, and this time it was more nearly blip, blip, blip, noises made ineffectually by him in a Fox News TV debate that showed he was just as amiss as ever, both intellectually and morally.

Libel — a falsity that smears a reputation — can be dreadful, and you ought to be able to sue and maybe win money if untrue, harmful things are being publicized about you. But watch out in public debates, because, if people are then allowed to sue too easily, they can squeeze needed discussion to puniness, as the Supreme Court recognized in a case against The New York Times half a century ago.

It can happen, I suspect, to any of us. Someone comes along with major thoughtfulness, lays it out in an enticing book that happens to lend aid and comfort to our ideological druthers, and we shout its praises and sneer at those who don't.